Longmont may ask voters to increase city's public safety tax

Officers John Winship, left, and Shawn Carey talk with a person involved in a two-car crash on 21st Avenue west of Main Street on Monday morning in Longmont. (Lewis Geyer / Staff Photographer)

If You Go

What: Longmont City Council meeting, with the agenda including discussions of potential November ballot questions

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Civic Center council chambers, 350 Kimbark St., Longmont

More Info: The full agenda, including staff memos about a number of the items, is available at bit.ly/2ppW15m

Longmont's City Council on Tuesday is to discuss whether it wants to proceed with asking voters' November approval of two proposed sales-tax hikes and a bond issue.

Council members are to consider whether to seek voters' authorization to increase a current 0.325 percent public safety sales and use tax — collections from the tax help fund Longmont's public safety service expenses — by 0.255 percent, raising it to 0.58 percent.

The city staff has estimated that the 0.255 percent hike could generate up to $6.2 million or more a year, starting in 2018.

Under the draft of a proposed ordinance up for council discussion on Tuesday, proceeds from the higher public safety tax would be "used exclusively to increase the level of service for public safety in the city of Longmont." It would help pay what the Public Safety Department has identified as staffing needs, including:

• Personnel to support those emergency police, dispatch and firefighting emergency responses.

Collections of the increased tax would also help pay for "police and fire equipment and facilities to ensure safety," according to the draft of the proposed ordinance.

If voters were to approve the additional 0.255 percent, it would hike Longmont's overall municipal sales and use tax to 3.53 percent, up from the city's present 3.275 percent rate.

During the council's June 13 meeting, Public Safety Chief Mike Butler and Deputy Chief Jeff Satur described the staffing shortages in the department now. Butler said that immediately after the city began collecting the current voter-approved public safety tax in 2007, the economy took a downturn, resulting in the tax not generating enough revenue to provide the number of staff needed then or since.

Also up for discussion on Tuesday night is whether to ask voters for a special sales tax to be paid by people buying marijuana and cannabis-infused products from recreational retail marijuana establishments, if the council decides to lift Longmont's ban on such pot shops.

If Longmont does permit recreational marijuana sales shops within its boundaries, customers would have to at least pay the city's basic sales tax on their purchases that people pay when buying other retail items. Longmont's current 3.275 percent sales tax rate would generate about $78,900 a year from each marijuana shop operating inside the city, the city staff has estimated.

The scene of a two-car crash on 21st Avenue between Main and Terry streets on Monday morning in Longmont. (Lewis Geyer / Staff Photographer)

However, the Colorado constitutional amendment that legalized recreational marijuana sales, and subsequent state laws, authorizes local governments to impose an even higher sales tax rate, if voters approve it.

While the council has not yet decided whether to seek voters' authorization, an additional special 3.4 percent marijuana sales tax, along with the current 3.275 percent basic sales tax for all retail purchases, would result in a total 6.675 percent sales tax on marijuana. That could generate a total of $160,800 a year from each such retail marijuana establishment, according to the city staff's projections.

The staff's draft of a proposed marijuana-tax ordinance for Tuesday's meeting does not specify or earmark how the revenues from that tax would be spent.

The interest and principal on those bonds would be repaid from Longmont's charges to its water customers and other non-tax revenues that generate money to support the budget's water enterprise fund.

On July 5, a 5-2 council majority decided to take the long-term, bond-financing approach, rather than relying solely or partly on cash flows from annual rates paid by Longmont's water customers.

Councilwomen Polly Christensen and Joan Peck voted against the $36.3 million bonding scenario at that meeting. They instead favored having the city support an alternative that would have lowered Longmont's share of water from the project — which is to include construction of a new Chimney Hollow reservoir southwest of Loveland — from 10,000 acre-feet to 8,000 or fewer acre-feet.

The city staff told the council earlier this month that if voters approve the $36.3 million in bonds, customers' 2018 water rates would increase by an average 13 percent above 2017 levels, with another 10 percent increase in 2019 and a 6 percent increase in 2020 as Longmont makes it annual principal and interest payments.

If the City Council on Tuesday gives its go-ahead for preparing ordinances with ballot language for a public-safety, sales-tax hike and a special marijuana sales tax, the council may cast initial votes on those measures on Aug. 8 and hold public hearings and take final action on the two ordinances on Aug. 22.

If the council proceeds Tuesday with its majority's earlier support for the Windy Gap Firming Project bonding proposal, a resolution with the ballot language for that item is to be up for council action on either Aug. 8 or Aug. 22.

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